Domestically, the place I most want to go is Hawai’i. There’s a story about that. Back in 1995, when I was going out with The Girlfriend, who eventually became The Wife, she was working for an insurance company. She had achieved some significant designation in the industry and had won a free trip for two to the 50th state. Did I want to go? Well, of course, I did, except…
At the very same time, there was a work trip to New Orleans. Now my job in the organization at the time was to do liaison work with other SBDCs, and going to the ASBDC conference fit in with that. I SHOULD be going on this trip. Unfortunately, we had gotten a new boss about a year earlier, and she was prone to pick her favorites to travel. I was not one of her favorites; none of the three men were, and only about half the women she liked. So she decided that only she and her most favorite would go to New Orleans, because the office would otherwise be shortstaffed.

Now the Girlfriend said, if I’m not going to New Orleans, which I had pitched and was rejected, why not try to go to Hawai’i with her? Because I knew she’d reject that too, since the office would still be shorthanded.

Then, at the last minute, the boss decided that I COULD go to New Orleans. This was not her being magnanimous, it was her realizing that they had heavy equipment to schlep on and off the plane and that they needed someone strong to do that, and I was elected.

Knowing that boss as I did, I firmly believed that if I had pitched going to Hawai’i, I would have likely have gone neither there OR to New Orleans.

I don’t think The Girlfriend truly understood this as not a rejection of her, but a realization of what was possible. I believe this incident played into us breaking up about six months later. Obviously, we’ve overcome it, but going to Hawai’i with her now would be splendid.